the big day

Tomorrow is a big day.

It's my last official day of The Unusual Urban Garden as I know it today. SAD!! I'm still going to come back and harvest some things via my wonderful neighbors. The new tenants are excited about gardening, so that makes me really happy! 

Mica's peeking around the soy beans up top, then my massive mess of cherry tomat's and my wonderfully lopsided growing cucumber! My FIRST cucumber!!

cool as a cucumber

Growing food is so cool! Look at these little cukes!! I love how the flowers become a little trumpet announcing the arrival of prickly baby cukers. I am fascinated everyday by the things growing in my urban garden. I love that bees, butterflies and birds find refuge in the mini eco-system that grows back here.

Doesn't the last photo look like it could be a Tim Burton drawing? Maybe he was inspired by gardening!

dragon in the sky

I went outside into the garden at dusk to water the plants and hang out in the garden a couple nights ago. What I thought were giant hummingbirds immediately started buzzing past my head. I sat on the porch and watched 5 of the biggest dragonflies I have ever seen fly around the yard for a good 25 minutes. They were still spiraling around when I went in to start dinner. There were some fireflies and a bright red cardinal hanging with us for a bit... who would guess this is Crown Heights Brooklyn? Loving nature in the city. 

july

Progress is being made, even though I thought I lost the bok choy, collards and kale, all are coming back nicely!

sage bouquet

I made this little bouquet last week when I needed to keep the bad energy out of the house.  Also, these daisies and little yellow flowers are the only flowering plants I have in the yard. It's pretty and fragrant. Plus, I can dry the sage and burn it to stave off bad vibes.

two smoking barrels

Gardening is a little like a Guy Richie film...

Just kidding. But seriously, you've got to fight to keep your plants. Rose and Erin were in Brooklyn this weekend and Rose told me to spread ash around the base of my plants to keep the slugs and snails out. Good thing we have a double barrel smoker in the yard! I also made a perimeter around the base of the containers.... double security system. As you can see from the bottom picture, the collards were destroyed (again) recently.

fairgrounds

This past weekend was Independence Day weekend. Ethan, Mica and I spent a wonderful weekend on Cape Cod with my cousin Alycia, her wonderful husband Timmy and their two dogs Dixie and Willie. The perfect weekend!! (See photo above)

I went from beach to Brooklyn. Once home, I was surprised to find my lush green garden reduced to a lonely fairground. The neighbors had a fun cookout/party over the weekend and it took it's toll on our yard. Not to mention it was over 100 degrees in New York over the holiday weekend, so the yard suffered.

pushing through

The wildflower seed I scattered in my containers around the urban garden are already pushing through the dirt. You can literally see dirt mounds moving above these persistent little seedlings! The morning glories have reached their peak vine height and are forming dozens of little ice cream cap, green tips spiraling towards the sun. The cucumbers are taking flight - or growing their grown-up leaves - and the experimental soybean plant is pushing through and on the up and up. 

Summer is here.

bzzzzzz plzzzzzz

My friend Viv gave me some gardening stuff that she can't utilize in her new apartment. I hung these little metal ikea "pots" from the edges of my planter boxes packed with wildflower and bee mixes to attract some honey beeeez.

You can tell from the pictures that the morning glories are loving the diy zig zag rope and have wound up the rope since last week. And in the last photograph you can see my cukes have sprouted kitty corner from the husky cherry tomato plant. (Which, by the way, is a midwestern way of saying "catercorner" but really, isn't it just diagonal?!)